We retired in July of 2009 in Santa Barbara, California ending careers that began in technology and speech, transitioning to education and psychology. We always enjoyed flying, especially in small planes, and in 2006 John earned a pilot license so since then we started flying much more.

In the Fall of 2009 we flew an SBFC small plane named Flash on our first Big Adventure, from Santa Barbara to San Diego to Maine to Florida and home. At the start of 2010 we bought a 1983 Cessna 172Q, whose name we’ve discovered is Tripp. As you’ve guessed, part of her name has to do with anticipating and planning many more “Big Adventure” trips. We began that with a 2010 North by Northwest adventure (aka NxNW) flight to Oshkosh and then across Canada to Alaska and home via Jasper & Banff.

This blog includes NxNW plus the imported adventures from the Big Adventure blog we did for that first trip, and we’ve continued sharing many of our subsequent exploits here. In February, 2011 we flew the White North from balmy Santa Barbara via Boise, ID into hard Winter in Edmonton, AB. Later that Spring we began our Meritimes trip heading from California via a southern route to Arkansas, which completed our quest to visit and land in all U.S. states (except for HI). From Arkansas we headed north and east via Washington DC, NY, ME flying to Prince Edward Isl, NB, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland, thus adding visits and landings in all the Canadian provinces.

Islander in 2013 was our longest trip, taking a southern route again to Florida, adding the Bahamas to our list of countries (and wonderful memories). Visiting friends and family along the eastern seaboard, we again headed north, the furthest point being to Canada (Montreal & Quebec City), then home through Chicago and Santa Fe. Since then our trips have mostly been the Rockies (4C) and West Coast (PNW) in 2014 including exploring some of Colorado.

John recently added a stunning 2015 Coasting portfolio of Big Sur and areas north & south of it. Hawaii is still on our list for touring in a small plane in 2017, but we’ll have to leave Tripp home on that one.